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Re-examining Lucasville: Essay 3 - A Tragedy?

A Tragedy?
When people use the word “tragedy,” they ordinarily mean something completely bad and sad, like the mass killings in the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. Almost as many human beings were killed during the eleven-day uprising in Lucasville (ten) as in the Aurora movie theater (twelve). But does the word “tragedy” adequately describe what happened at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility?

I think the correct answer is, Yes, but in two different ways. One of the meanings the dictionary gives for “tragedy” is “a lamentable, dreadful, or fatal event or affair,” a “calamity,” a “disaster.” The dictionary gives an example: “the tragedy of the President’s assassination.”

And certainly the Lucasville Uprising was such a tragedy. The ten persons murdered were unarmed and outnumbered. They never had a chance.

Tell Secretary of State Husted: Restore Ohio's early voting hours

Following unprecedented Black voter turnout in Ohio during the 2008 presidential election, Republicans there have been looking for ways to diminish the Black community’s electoral power.

Now, under the leadership of Secretary of State Jon Husted, they’ve turned to eliminating the opportunity to cast absentee ballots on weekends leading up to Election Day. This is a clear attempt to limit Black voters’ and other urban dwellers’ access to the polls.

Join us in telling Husted to bring back weekend early voting hours so that all Ohioans have the opportunity to vote.

That's why I signed a petition to OH Secretary of State John Husted.

Will you sign this petition? Click here:

Sign on here

The Romney’s fast lane to climate disruption

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney presented his energy plan for the nation on August 23rd to a crowd of supporters in Hobbs, New Mexico. My reading of Romney's 18-page speech and other public documents and reports raise a number of concerns about his positions on energy policy.

The overriding goal of Romney's energy plan is to initiate and press hard for policies that will enhance the power of the already powerful and too-big-to-fail oil, gas, and coal companies as the best way to achieve "energy independence.” The idea of winning independence of foreign oil is a hackneyed notion offered up by presidential candidates and incumbents every four years going back to the early 1970s. Michael Grunwald makes this point in his new book, The New New Deal:

"Ever since 1973, when Richard Nixon vowed to end oil imports by the decade's end, every president had made we-can-do-it promises about energy independence. 'I happen to believe that we can do it,' said Gerald Ford. Jimmy Carter had proclaimed this crusade 'the more equivalent of war.' Even George W. Bush had pledged 'to move beyond a petroleum-based economy" (p. 38).

Yes We Camp

In Tampa, heavy rain and intense sun and heat were the two main weather patterns. Sometimes we sought shelter in the shade and sometimes in tents and under tarps. One night a dozen or more of the folk of Romneyville gave up on trying to sleep in a 6 hour car wash and shared a huge concrete bed with homeless folk under an overpass. We’re gone but most of them are probably still there.

The intense heat and sun was good for drying out our rain-soaked clothes as we wore them on our bodies, or after we’ve tied them to a rusting fence or scattered them on the ground.

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The rain took away my body and hair odor as I got drenched yelling at cops during a march : “the police are not the problem, per se; the problem is big money which is buying our government; this is a movement based on love.” At least two cops responded, “we know.”

The Breton Fisherman's Prayer

The Arctic ice is melting at a record pace this summer - just one more measurable phenomenon indicating that extraordinary change in the global ecosystem is in progress. As the ice melts, and the vast polar reflecting surface diminishes, the planet absorbs more and more of the sun’s energy and . . . grows warmer. More ice melts.

"Oh God, thy sea is so great and my boat is so small."

The Arctic ice is melting at a record pace this summer - just one more measurable phenomenon indicating that extraordinary change in the global ecosystem is in progress. As the ice melts, and the vast polar reflecting surface diminishes, the planet absorbs more and more of the sun's energy and ... grows warmer. More ice melts.

So what?

Sitting at my desk in Chicago, I was tempted to opt out of caring about this - trend Republican, you might say. Put it on the back, ahem, burner. It takes a leap of consciousness to align my own well-being with the fate of the Arctic ice, the ocean, the Inuits, the polar bears.

Obamobedience

Virginia Senate candidate Tim Kaine spoke prior to Obama's speech on Wednesday in Charlottesville, Va. He had praise for anyone signing up to go to war in Afghanistan. "We can still put our positive thumbprint on that nation," he said, to wild cheers. Imagine the competition among the world's nations to get our thumbprint next! Imagine what it costs to get our assprint.

"So, who are you voting for?" an Obama follower asked me prior to the event. I was holding posters with 12 friends and handing out hundreds of flyers that looked like Obama material until you read them. (PDF).

The posters objected to the tripling of weapons sales to foreign dictators last year, Obama's willingness to cut Social Security and Medicare, the kill list, imprisonment without trial, warrantless spying, corporate trade agreements, the continued so-called "Bush" tax cuts, the war on Afghanistan, the drone wars, the increased military budget, the murder of Tariq Aziz and of Abdulrahman al Awlaki, the weak auto efficiency standards in the news that day, the refusal to prosecute torturers, Obama's sabotaging of agreements to counter global warming, etc.

Murdoch's Journal pushes tragic Fukushima flim-flam

With every atomic reactor disaster comes the inevitable whitewash.

And Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal has just painted a tragic new coat over the radioactive wasteland of atomic flim-flam.

Its "Panic at Fukushima" speaks volumes to a nuclear power industry now crumbling at the core.  It fits an historic pattern:

When yet another radioactive leak emits from the local nuke---no matter how serious---the official response is hard-wired to include the phrase "no danger to the public." 

When serious structural cracks surface at reactors like Ohio's Davis-Besse or Crystal River, Florida,  safety concerns are invariably dismissed with well-funded contempt.  

As with fatally flawed steam generators at California's San Onofre, if it can make an extra buck, the industry will run these reactors into the ground, safety-be-damned.  Protected by federal taxpayer insurance and the bankruptcy laws, they know even a catastrophic disaster need not trouble their bottom line.    

Help free Pussy Riot

Will three courageous women of Pussy Riot remain in prison for years? We can help answer that question with solidarity.
Please click here to sign the RootsAction.org petition to free Pussy Riot

For the “crime” of performing a song against Russia’s president Vladimir Putin in a Moscow church, three women in the Pussy Riot band -- Yekaterina Samutsevich, Maria Alekhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova -- have each been sentenced to two years in prison.

But a court hearing in early September could reduce their sentences. There’s no time to lose.

"We emphasize that we advocate for non-violence and hold a grudge against no one," the three women wrote in a recent letter. They added that "our laughter is, in a sense, laughter through the tears, and our sarcasm is a reaction to the lawlessness."

After a trial that sometimes was no more logical than the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, these women should be free, not locked up in prison!

Get Ready for a Catastrophic War: Israel Likely to Strike Iran Before November Elections

More Washington insiders are coming to the conclusion that Israel’s leaders are planning to attack Iran before the U.S. election in November in the expectation that American forces will be drawn in. There is widespread recognition that, without U.S. military involvement, an Israeli attack would be highly risky and, at best, only marginally successful.

At this point, to dissuade Israeli leaders from mounting such an attack might require a public statement by President Barack Obama warning Israel not to count on U.S. forces — not even for the “clean-up.” Though Obama has done pretty much everything short of making such a public statement, he clearly wants to avoid a confrontation with Israel in the weeks before the election.

However, Obama’s silence regarding a public warning speaks volumes to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The recent pilgrimages to Israel by very senior U.S. officials — including the Secretaries of State and Defense carrying identical “PLEASE DON’T BOMB IRAN JUST YET” banners — has met stony faces and stone walls.

Four ways the Ohio GOP is already stealing the 2012 election

The Ohio Republican Party has moved four ways to steal America's 2012 election. The Buckeye State is almost certain to emerge as a decider in this year's presidential election, and the GOP is moving fast to ensure victory, no matter what it takes.  

The strategy reflects much of what was done by the Republicans in 2000 and 2004 to steal those presidential elections for George W. Bush, as we report in the newly published WILL THE GOP STEAL AMERICA'S 2012 ELECTION? (now at www.harveywasserman.ning.com and at www.freepress.org).

If they get away with it, the Ohio GOP could make it virtually impossible for Barack Obama to carry Ohio this November. In the years since Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004, the Democratic Party has made little headway in reforming our electoral system to make such thefts impossible:

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